HP OMEN 17-CB1002TX

HP sapped the color from the HP OMEN 17-CB1002TX RTX 2080 Super, leaving us with a more sophisticated design. A sleek, chrome-silver badge replaces the bright-red logo from the previous Omen 17, and gone is the flashy red X on the center of the lid. The contrasting solid-black material and brushed-metal triangle pattern on the lid of the new model look just as good. Even the deck of the new Omen 17 has been cleaned up. HP stripped the keys of their red font and replaced them with a traditional white type. The same goes for the Omen branding below the keyboard and the Voodoo tribal mask below the display.

Performance

The best configuration of the HP OMEN 17-cb1002TX, which we are testing today, features an Intel Core i9-10885H, 08GB Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Super and 32 GB of DDR4 RAM (2x 16 GB, dual channel). This hardware combination makes this device suitable for almost any area of use and should future-proof it for quite some time. The SSD RAID also guarantees a fast system performance with short load and boot times.

Display

The 17.3-inch, 1080p display gets plenty bright and vivid, and gamers will also appreciate the panel’s 144-Hz refresh rate when playing fast-paced games. HP has joined in the current trend of using high-refresh-rate displays and has equipped the Omen 17 with a 144-Hz IPS display with a matte surface.

Keypad

The touchpad has a good size at 10.2 x 5.6 cm (~4 x 2.2 in). Due to its slightly rough finish, fingers do not glide over the surface as easily as on some other gaming notebooks. The dedicated mouse keys have a clear pressure point and feedback. Not surprisingly, the touchpad supports several gestures. We had no issues zooming and scrolling with two fingers. The precision of the touchpad is average.

Ports

The HP Omen 17 RTX 2080 Super has a decent port selection that includes three classic USB 3.0 Type A ports as well as a modern Type C port that supports USB 3.1 Gen 2, DisplayPort and Thunderbolt 3. The other ports include an HDMI connector and a Mini-DisplayPort for connecting external monitors, an SD card reader and an RJ45 port as well as two audio jacks. The Omen 17 does not have a Kensington Lock connector. As most of the ports are positioned towards the back of the sides, there is sufficient space for using a physical mouse on either side of the device

Audio

The HP OMEN 17-cb1002TX gets some extra points for its surprisingly good audio quality. The two speakers that are positioned on the sides of the device come from Bang & Olufsen (or rather, they are certified by the company) and offer a fairly balanced sound experience that includes highs, mids and lows – despite not having a subwoofer. Many gaming competitors have to make do with significantly lower sound quality.

Verdict

’ At the end of the day, the HP Omen 17-cb1002tx manages to score top mark ’’

Apart from the relatively good price-to-performance ratio compared to the RTX 2080 Super competition we were also impressed by the design of the case. The audio and port selection (Thunderbolt 3), as well as the great 144-Hz display with support for G-Sync, all play their part in making this a good gaming laptop.